Despite being a “premium” brand name in the tech world, having annual revenue in the order of tens of billions of dollars and an effective of worldwide employees of over 100,000 people, Philips has never been what you’d call Android-friendly.

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We’ve only seen a couple of low-end phones and tablets from the Dutch-based multinational electronics company over the years (and we do mean low-end), as well as one or two media players that are as fashionable now as crocs.

But as tough as trying to penetrate the ultra-competitive Android market from the position of a newcomer might be these days, Philips seems all set to unveil the company’s first (half) decent smartphone.

The W8355 has been spotted online by the good folks over at Unwired View and should see daylight soon as one of the few affordable supersized devices around. There’s no word on the actual pricing for now, but seeing this big guy’s rather uninspired spec sheet we think Philips is not going to ask us to dig very deep into our pockets.

The 5.3-inch screen boasting a 960 x 540 pixels resolution is one the features that sounds the most promising about the W8355, while on the flipside we have the dated Android 4.0 ICS, just 512 MB of RAM and a mediocre 5 MP rear-facing camera.

4G LTE is of course missing from the “beast” as well, while the dual-core 1 GHz CPU is covered in mystery. The only other specs known at the moment are the standard Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity options, while the “package” is said to measure 10.9 mm in thickness, 147.6 in height and 79 in width. Not too shabby for such a big fellow, although we can’t imagine the W8355 will be entering any beauty pageants soon.

A Bluetooth SIG listing seems to point at a very wide release for the Philips W8355, but until hearing something official on that we’re going to assume the worst – that is, the 5.3-incher will only be released in China.

Oh, right, we almost forgot about the phablet’s piece de resistance spec-wise – the dual-SIM support. That’s one more argument that backs a limited China release, but also a feature that makes this a direct competitor for Samsung’s soon to be unveiled Galaxy Grand Duos and the recently spotted dirt-cheap Kogan Agora.

The thing is Philips might not have enough to undercut either of the two devices, what with the extra power of the Grand Duos and Agora’s unbeatable price, so we wouldn’t get too excited about the tech giant’s latest venture in the Android world after all. Does anyone disagree? How so?